Dispatches from Vilnius

It's been a fun ride - more than 2000 posts and 10,000 comments over a 12-year period - but there doesn't seem to be much recent activity other than periodically being hit by lurkers in Russia and the occasional comments offering escort services in India.  I've long been curious who these Russian lurkers are.  They leave no comments, but they pop up fairly regularly, suggesting that my blog is on someone's radar screen.  I delete the Indian escort services. I never intended for this to become my blog.  It was initially imagined as a forum for American history readers after the old New York Times Reading forums were shut down in the mid 2000s, so I created a haven for the handful of history buffs who enjoyed doing a group read from time to time.  That group thinned out over the years, with the readers reduced to two -- Trippler and me.  I began posting more and more personal observations, eventually becoming obsessed with the Trump administration, which app...

With coronavirus ravaging the world once again, some places worse than others, my wife noted that I was coughing more than usual this morning.  My throat felt a little dry.  The coffee wasn't helping, so I drank a glass of kiselis, a thick cranberry concoction.  I also think I have a bit of an allergic reaction to the cat.  Not used to having a feline around the house. The latest wave seems to be abating a bit.  The quarantine imposed over the holidays appears to have helped.  My wife's brother had to go through a road block to deliver gifts on Christmas Eve.  You are only allowed to have contact with one family member outside the house and no travel between cities except for essential services.  Cases in Lithuania are still too high.  Much higher than in neighboring Latvia and Estonia, and one of the highest per capita rates in the world. We were discussing this over Christmas Eve dinner.  Even with 3000 new cases being reported per day...

The Jets had the inside track on the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes , yet they not only showed up on Sunday but gave the Los Angeles Rams a whipping they won't soon forget.  This proves again the old adage that on any given Sunday any NFL team can win.  Not to be outdone, the lowly Bengals took down Pittsburgh on Monday Night, handing the once vaunted Steelers their third straight loss.  Neither game was particularly close.  Both the Jets and Bengals led by as many as 17 points, holding off late charges by the Rams and Steelers.  The Rams suffered more than the Steelers, as it knocked them out of first place in the NFC West.  The Steelers are struggling but still have a one-game lead over the Browns. Somehow the NFL has made it through 15 of its 17 weeks without any serious scheduling problems due to COVID-19.  The players have shown themselves remarkably disciplined given they are not being forced to play in a "bubble" as was the case with the NBA when...

I thought it might be fun to watch Christmas Vacation again, but some movies are best left back in the 80s where they belong.  Netflix is bringing back a number of so-called classics from the era and it can be quite embarrassing sharing these movies with a younger generation, as I found out the hard way.  You really thought this was funny, my daughter asked me afterward?  I made up for it by introducing her to The Blues Brothers . John Hughes was to comedy in the 1980s what Judd Apatow is today.  He's capable of a funny movie here and there but for the most part they are dull-witted scripts with actors struggling to make something funny out of them.  Sometimes, there appears to be no script at all.  Just some sketches strung together by the thinnest of storylines, as we have seen in Apatow's collaborations with Seth Rogen and Will Farrell.   It's not easy writing comedy, as proved the case with Douglas Kenney, who had the idea of bringing Nationa...

I finally got around to watching The Undoing .  For what was ostensibly a psychological drama, you would think at least Grace, a clinical psychologist, would recognize her husband's illness properly but she too didn't seem to know the distinction between a sociopath and a psychopath.  These are the all too common personality disorders associated with villains in these types of movies and serials.  I suppose she may have been suffering from "confirmation bias," as was pointed out to her by the prosecuting attorney in the final episode, but more likely she wasn't a very good psychologist, as she completely misread her husband and you wonder how many patients as well.  We were only given a glimpse of a gay couple she was providing marriage counseling for.  The story line was threadbare to say the least, which is surprising given David Kelly and Susanne Bier had six hours to tell their story.  What little information we were able to gather from the main charact...

I have to say that is one of the best retorts I've heard in years.  Maggi Hambling was having  none of the criticism to her nude depiction of Mary Wollstonecraft, especially since it came mostly from stuffy old men whose schlongs have probably shriveled up.  "Criticism has got to be like water off a duck's back," she said her art teacher once told her.  However it is just not men who hate the sculpture.    Rhiannon Lucy Cosslet finds it needlessly distracting.  Still, you wonder why Hambling would choose to portray the feminist icon in this way.   Hambling is renown for her art and sculptures over the years, often finding unusual ways to present her subjects, such as a giant scallop shell honoring Benjamin Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk.  The piece was also met with criticism, but since has become a popular tourist stop.  So, controversy isn't necessarily a bad thing. No doubt more Britons are becoming familiar with ...

Our ersatz president would like us to believe that he isn't fighting for himself but for the 74 million persons who voted for him.  A record number, he points out, for a sitting president.  No surprise he was appalled that the Supreme Court rejected the suit  that was filed by Texas AG Paxton to nullify the results in four states that Trump had won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Only conservative old farts Alito and Thomas were willing to hear the absurd suit, which claimed these unbelievable results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia represented an existential threat to the security of the Lone Star State.  "No Wisdom, No Courage," Trump shouted on Twitter! Trumplicans still aren't done.  Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks threatens to challenge the Electoral College results in January, now that there is nothing to impede the college from convening on Monday and formally certifying the election for President-Elect Biden.  Mo will no doubt have the suppo...

Seems like Matthew McConaughey is auditioning for the role of the next Mike Rowe.  He pitched his "centric" vision on the Russell Brand Show the other night, equating the conservative reaction to Trump's 2020 defeat to the liberal reaction to his victory in 2016.  Try as I might, I don't recall Team Hillary challenging the results or Obama refusing to meet Trump at the White House or putting up roadblocks to his transition team.  Nor, were there any attempts to overturn close results in state legislatures and federal courts, as we have seen with Trump's dubious legal team .  Yes, liberals weren't happy Trump won but they didn't go into denial, as Matty is suggesting, threatening to take up arms in protest as many in Magaland are now doing. To this point, All Right Matty has tread a thin line in giving motivational speeches across the country and peddling his books, most recently Greenlights , in which he offers his Texan wit and wisdom.  The proud Austin ...

With the temperature dropping below freezing, I let the cat in on the window sill.  That's as far as my wife will let her enter the house.  The small gray tabby has been coming around our yard for several years now.  She has survived at least three winters as far as I can tell, maybe more.  Hard to put an age on a cat but I would say no more than five, as it was a juvenile when we first saw her pitch up along with what looked like her darker sibling.  They both had the same mottled brown mixed into their coats and were the same size.  The darker sibling still appears on rare occasions.  I assume she found sympathetic hosts somewhere else in Žverynas. We thought it might have been our neighbors' cat as we saw her sitting on their window sill from time to time, but they expressed no interest in the ashen feline.  She seemed so thin a few weeks back, so I started feeding her.  Little nibbles at first but then I started buying small packets of mo...

Trump apparently has no intention of meeting with Biden during the transition or attending his inauguration in January.  Instead, he continues to shout fraud on twitter, demanding that Biden " prove " how he got 80 million votes before he leaves the White House.  Of course, one can argue that the 74 million votes that Trump received is even more suspicious, given how many Republicans publicly stated they were voting against him in the general election.    It was an odd election.  Despite a raging pandemic, over 65% of Americans voted this year.  By far the largest turnout in over 100 years.  It seems Trumpers and Never-Trumpers were both equally energized this time around, turning out in record numbers.  Democrats also flocked to the polls but not in the big numbers many expected, as they were unable to flip the Senate (even with two run-off elections pending in Georgia) and lost seats in the House.  This election was all about Trump. The var...